Prospect Well-Prepared for Next Big Step

Sports Commentary

The first time Jaymar Johnson showed off his speed, his mother knew that he would be OK. He was still a baby, shy of his first birthday, and a pair of casts had just finished correcting a birth defect in his legs and feet.

The last time Johnson ran for an important audience, it was the New England Patriots watching. Their scouting department oversaw a personal workout, assessing the Jackson State wide receiver as a fringe prospect for next week's NFL draft. He could go in one of the late rounds or be signed as an undrafted free agent. Either way, he will represent the most fascinating part of the league's annual replenishing.

The first round of the draft tends to be a high stakes game of craps, while the lower rounds are more of a treasure hunt. A team can squander a fortune and a piece of its future at the top of the draft. At the bottom, there are only lovely bargains.

This is where the league found Tom Brady and Terrell Davis, sixth-round picks who own three Super Bowl MVP awards (Davis from 1998, Brady from 2002 and 2004). Priest Holmes, Wes Welker, Tony Romo, Willie Parker, Kurt Warner (Super Bowl MVP 2000), Jeff Garcia and Jake Delhomme never went anywhere in the draft. They came into the league through the servants' entrance, then progressed to the red carpet.

Johnson could be another one of them, although his bio matches Troy Aikman's. Both of them had club feet as babies. It's a condition that causes one or both of a newborn's feet to curl inward, sometimes so badly that the feet appear to be almost upside down, with the soles pointing upward. As a result, the legs typically bow, looking like -- as Johnson put it -- "a pair of parentheses."

About one in every thousand children have club feet, and their parents probably take comfort anytime someone points out that Aikman, a No. 1 draft pick and three-time Super Bowl champion, spent his infancy in casts and his toddler years in special shoes.

Johnson, however, was born six years before Aikman was drafted. His parents received assurances that everything would work out, but they were also told that if the casts didn't work fairly quickly, the doctors would have to break Jaymar's tiny, crooked legs and reset them. You can imagine his mother's reaction.

"His legs weren't better the first time they took the casts off, but the doctor could see how distraught I was," Elizabeth Johnson said. "And he said, 'OK, I'm going to try this one more time, Mother.' "

For about six months, Jaymar wore the long heavy casts and learned to play constructively with them. He'd lie on the floor and lift his legs in the air, then knock the casts together. He was doing infant iron-pumping, with a hint of Pilates. His mother can still remember the sound.

"It was so funny, this little baby with his legs up, clicking those big white casts," she said.

It may be a stretch to say Jaymar revealed the work ethic of pro athlete before he left diapers, but his mother is pretty certain that he built up tremendous leg strength during those months.

"He never did crawl, he just got up and started walking," she said.

Johnson didn't even know about the birth defect until late in high school, and he didn't really understand the significance until he was in college and the family showed him pictures of himself in the casts. By then, he had the NFL in sight.

After his junior year at Jackson State, he participated in the school's pro day. He and Antonio Knight, an assistant coach who works as the team's pro liaison, said Johnson ran 40-yard dashes in the range of 4.31 to 4.34 seconds. Versatility also helps his case; he can return kicks and punts.

"The New Orleans Saints took a lot of interest in him then, and they've been following him ever since," Knight said.

After his senior year, Johnson went to the NFL combine in Indianapolis and ran a 4.50. He said an ankle injury was troubling him at the time, and when the scouts came to Jackson State for another pro day, he ran faster, recording a 4.42.

"I was really disappointed in that as well," he said, "because I haven't run a 4.4 anything since high school."

But he had done enough to get into the draft-day mix. The Eagles, as well as the Patriots, put him through an individual workout. For a player at this level, they are -- or should be -- looking for something extra. A first-round pick can come in with an exasperating swagger, and the club has to dote on him. If a seventh-round pick brings attitude, it had better be the Boy Scout with an Edge variety.

Johnson's advocates believe he can ace the character test. Callers to his cell phone hear a Bible verse while they wait for him to pick up. In the offseason, he has held down two jobs to help support himself and his wife of three years, Kassy.

"He'll outwork anybody on the team," said Knight, who helps run Jackson State's strength and conditioning programs. In the summer, Knight would demand that players arrive at the gym at 7 a.m. Johnson, who was working graveyard shifts at a park-ranger station, always arrived on time.

"I found out later, and I told him: 'Man, go ahead and get some rest first,' " Knight said. "But he said: 'No, Coach, I got to get it done.' "

Johnson also worked weekends at a hospital, assisting with physical therapy, which he'd like to pursue as a career after football. Hard work kind of runs in the family. His father is retired from U.S. Steel, and his mother spent 15 years on the night shift as a telephone operator at St. Catherine's Hospital, near their hometown of Gary, Ind. Only when her seven children were grown did she feel comfortable moving to earlier work.

When I called to talk about her son, Elizabeth Johnson said she'd be on duty until 11 p.m., and we agreed to speak late the next morning. Then she phoned back and said that someone had called in sick, so she'd be working a double shift until 7 a.m. So I reached her at about 2 a.m., and between calls to the switchboard, she explained her son's club feet and the recovery process. She had tremendous energy for a grandmother on her second shift. It seems the casts on Jaymar's little legs weren't the only things that made him stronger.

Gwen Knapp is a sports columnist at the San Francisco Chronicle.